Prevention Is the Best Migration Cure

PARIS – With newspapers full of stories about the challenges migrant families face, it might be tempting to assume that the causes of displacement are also being addressed. In most cases, however, such an assumption would be wrong. Today, solutions to forced migration focus almost exclusively on aiding refugees after they flee, rather than targeting the reasons for their flight. To resolve the world’s refugee crises, the causes require as much attention as the effects.

Why would parents risk their lives, or the lives of their children, to leave home and journey into the unknown? And what can be done to keep families from being forced to migrate in the first place? These are among the key questions that colleagues and I have attempted to answer in a new OECD study,........